CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Chigoneka, Tiyamike |
|---|---|
| Title | Business Format Franchising in Malawi: How Should the Law Regulate Business Format Franchises in Malawi? |
| Summary | Franchises are becoming more and more widely recognized as a successful business model with the potential to contribute to economic growth, especially for developing economies such as Malawi. The model allows the franchisor to expand their business to a new territory without the associated financial risk while the franchisee starts a new business on an established and successful business model, without having to suffer the common failures of start-up businesses. For the franchisor, the cost of this opportunity is that he must not only share very sensitive information on which the success of its business is built, but he must also ensure that the franchisee maintains the quality standards and protects the integrity of the brand. The franchisee on the other hand, invests a dear sum into a business model on the strength of promises of success over which he has very limited control and knowledge. While Malawi is yet to enact any business format franchise law, many other countries have recognized the unique vulnerability of the parties to a franchise and use the law to protect each party against abuse by its counterpart. If at all Malawi should be able to exploit the business format franchise as a tool for economic growth, the legal and regulatory environment for franchising in the country must be made conducive for both parties and ensure optimal performance of the system. This paper seeks to examine the Malawian legal framework for franchises and its strengths and weaknesses in securing the interests of franchisors and franchisees. It particularly highlights the position of the franchisee as the weaker party in franchise agreements and advocates for a balanced approach in the protection of the parties. Drawing from the more developed franchise law jurisdictions of California, Germany and South Africa, the paper adopts a normative and prescriptive analysis based on the principles of fairness and efficiency to explore the possible solutions which may be tailored for franchise law in Malawi. |
| Supervisor | TIBOR TAJTI |
| Department | Legal Studies LLM |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/chigoneka_tiyamike.pdf |
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